Anyone else notice a shift in friends since having a baby (if this is your first)? I had a pretty close knit group of friends and although one other is married, none of the three of them have kids. The other two are not even close to being married. Only one has been out to visit me and the baby which hurt my feelings a ton that the other two couldn't find time in their busy drinking schedule to even stop out for 20 minutes. keep in mind they live, at most 15 minutes from me and my DH. At first they were inviting me to parties and got cranky with me when I said I couldn't do things that started at 9 or 10pm...not to mention that I just had a c-section so I really wasn't able to do much at all. Then they stopped inviting me altogether. One called and asked if we wanted to go out but I didn't have a sitter that night. I said 'why don't you guys stop over for a while'...well he took that as meaning I was going to cook him dinner and then we were going to hang out and drink all night like old times. When I told him we would have to start at like 6:30 then my DH and I would probably go to bed at 9pm to coincide with the baby's schedule, he got all wierd and said 'well what are we going to do then if you have to go to bed so early??' I said well you could come see the baby!! no answer from him and a no show that night.
Anyone else feel like their non-parent friends are sort of pushing them away? I know my life has drastically changed, but overall I'm still the same person and am hurt that these people who I've been friends with for over 20 years are so uninterested and uninvolved. I ran out and visited each of them when they got a dam* dog!! I got a PERSON and they can't find time to come over!!??
Flip side is that I have really grown closer to other former acquaintances that do have kids.
Re: Shift in friends
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Ditto this. You sound really young. My friends are all adults, so no, our friendship hasn't changed at all.
I do make an effort to do things with my non-parent friends that don't include my baby. But they understand when I can't.
Wow. I got around 22 from your OP. I'm surprised by this. Well, in this case people change. I have no advice, except that if you value the friendships you should talk to them about it.
I suppose the term adult needs to be based on actions not age! I re-read and could see how the post could be construed as being from someone much younger by the drinking and partying terms. I should have clarified that my DH and I would have people over (a party) and have drinks because we no longer go to bars (this was pre-baby) nor do we want to worry about driving home. So yeah, there was a good bit of drinking since no one was driving home but it wasn't exactly the frat party that the wording sort of made it sound like! Now, their actions much more closely resemble those which I would expect from someone of college age.
my recommendation is for you guys to do the planning and inviting over, at least to establish your new 'norm'.
when I've had friends become parents in the past, I thought I was being respectful to not 'bother' them when I knew they couldn't really go out with a new baby, and I didn't want to call a bunch because they had their hands full. now I see that they might have taken that as me writing them off or not wanting to be friends since they couldn't do the same things, even though that wasn't my intention (could or could not be what your friends are doing).
so for us, it helped for us to be the ones planning things for a little bit, so that our friends could see that we still very much could hang out in the early parts of the evenings, or that they could come over to our place once LO is down for the night. It's definitely not exactly the same as before, but they know that we aren't hermits and things have been great with our friends.
DH and I also have the kind of relationship where we encourage each other to hang out with our friends, so he'll watch her while I go to the movies or mani/pedi's, etc, or I've been home alone while DH went to a going away party, concerts...
This is happening to me too. I started going to a mother's group and I am starting to hang out a lot with people who I have met there.
Wedding/Honeymoon Pictures
wow! older than me
I wouldn't have guessed!